Fingernails
by violaqu33n
Summary: A future fic, telling the story of blood and life. Temari centric. Character death, minor Shikatema, at the end.


Enjoy my angsty little metaphors.

Her fingernails are bloody.

The dark red life blood of the enemy Rain Nin splattered onto her dress and face, on her hands and shoulders. She can shove the black dress in the washing machine a hundred times, take a long shower to sponge away any gory reminders of the last mission, but the tiny patches of skin under her nails are soaked with blood, and all the soap in the world doesn't seem to be enough right now.

Nothing is enough right now. The number of civilians she's killed should enough, but it isn't, it won't ever be enough.

Sometimes, she goes into a trance, running painfully hot water on her hands, scrubbing and scrubbing, till the skin cracks and peels into little red lines and blisters. She can't stop until they're clean, not until the old layer of skin is completely gone, replaced by a sensitive, tender cover of white skin.

Her brothers don't mention the mental traps she steers herself into. They all have their vices, and as far as mental dementia goes, she isn't too badly off. Yet.

They arrive in the gleaming, pristine, and completely clean city of Konoha. She likes it, likes how big the hospital is, the sharp creases in the medics' uniforms, and the way they smell of antiseptic cream. She checks most of the competitors in the Chuunin exams and is immediately sure she can take on anyone.

Their hands are all clean.

She takes down the first girl, whose porcelain skin gleams snowy white, even while she flies through the air, slammed from the powerful chakra of her fan. Even when she lands directly onto the hard steel end of her battle fan, that clean, clean, clean flesh twinkles in the cold artificial lighting.

It makes her angrier than ever before, and that night, she falls hard and fast into the traps of her twisted mind, pouring water again and again, until her sensei comes in to stop her, and wraps her hands in tight bandages.

She doesn't mind this so much. You can't see the bloodstains at all.

She starts wearing gloves, even outside in the bright sunlight, to bed, to training. It's a new feeling, something separating her from the cold hunk of steel bent into a fan. But there are blood stains on her fan, and it keeps them apart.

It's only a matter of time before she starts wearing a blindfold, so the dried blood can't stain her vision too.

She checks her next opponent. A boy. A total rookie that has never even left the village, let alone killed. He's clean, completely untainted, and she likes it. She wants to see the blood run down those boyish arms, wants to watch the cuts break open and see the pretty red color flowing down those wrists.

She can't make it happen. He catches her with that impossibly dark, twisting shadow and forces her to walk forward, no blood, no scratches, nothing. She catches a quick glimpse of his skinny arms and is thrilled in a sick way to see faint scars running up and down, hiding under the thin mesh shirt.

It makes her smile. They have something in common.

After the Chuunin exams, they don't see each other often. She finds a new hobby, to replace the old habit of scrubbing her hands to death, and she can really blame him, that skinny boy with skinny scars. It's really his sensei's fault, but now she smokes. Smokes and presses hot, burning tips of cigarettes straight to the back side of her knees. It hurts more than on her fingers, but no one looks at the back of her knees, and those fingers are already blood soaked.

She doesn't need more to look at in the moonlight. Blood stains seem to glow; she doesn't need to smell the burnt skin as well.

It lasts for awhile, the whole idea of home not being somewhere that her brothers can't find her and become completely psychotic and just murdering her in her bed, and it seems to be there to stay, when she bends down to grab a stray kunai, and reveals the bare backs of her legs. Small, black dots made from tiny burns cover the veins on her thighs, and without warning, a hard hand of sand smashes her against the wall.

There is no understanding in pale green eyes. None.

They scream and fight, curses flung, insults hurled with sharp jabbing point aimed to the heart. The names of dead family floats into the air and sizzle, three years of a somewhat normal structure smashed to pieces.

"_Mother never liked you!"_

They don't speak for several weeks, and she goes off on more A-class missions than ever. More sneaking around in the dead of night, more shadows covering deep red skin, more single room hotel suites, with big bathrooms and sparkling sinks.

After a few months of sulking in separate rooms, one word exchanges, and angry glances shot around corners, she becomes the new Suna ambassador to the Leaf Village. She can't wait to go back, see who has the telltale piles of dried blood under their fingernails, and just mess with the newest batch of kids, children that have been trained to kill.

Her guide, the boy whose pale, pale skin laughed openly in her face those three years past, is now taller, stronger, and with a six pack, waits for her at the front gate. His fingers are still untainted.

"Have you ever killed anyone?"

It's an open question, not teasing, like the nicknames or little verbal jabs they throw casually back and forth. She is directly testing his abilities, wondering if he should even be wearing that Chuunin vest.

He nods, and she glances back from his clean hands, to the bored expression on his face. He looks honest, and it makes her not trust him even more.

"My shadow." And it clicks. He has killed, but not personally, not stabbing with a hunk of gleaming iron until the helpless body of a sleeping diplomat that might cause trouble, never, ever stirs again.

"Crybaby."

He is a paradox. Her paradox.

Three years later, one brother dead, one father missing for two years, an alliance crumpled to dust and ash, they meet again, on the field, and she can hardly see the difference between her soldiers and the enemies through the thick fog of blood mist.

_Is blood thicker than water?_

They fight till the very end, waving fans and snaking shadows making a deadly storm of destruction that is totally indiscriminant of its victims. He managed to pull her too close to him, so she can't fight properly with her fan, so it's folded, a massive steel club.

He dragged her closer, and she tries to shake of the unbreakable hold of the Nara clan, eyes closed, teeth clenched, pulling away at all costs. There is the faint sound of kunai skimming of skin, and the blood, the hot blood that stains everything, pours from her throat. They're only an arm's length away, and the flow from her slashed jugular drips down onto his calloused fingertips. He holds him up and she mirrors him perfectly, gasping for breath, and he makes their fingers press together, her own blood seeping into her hands.

His face is only a finger's breadth away, and their noses bump together clumsily, for the last time. He presses dry lips to her own, cold, chapped, and fighting against the clammy touch of death. Warm fingers graze tenderly own her marred skin, finding old scars, and some how makes it to the back of her thighs, finds the burns.

In the last seconds of her life, he pulls away from her and flashes his fingers at her. The nails glint in the moonlight.

Bloodstained.


End file.
